Jessica Greene
English 134H
September 18, 2007
Still Life
Why do I hate holidays? Why should anyone empathize with Ebenezer Scrooge and have Peter
Pan’s sentiment toward birthdays? To answer plainly, throughout my life holidays have been horribly
bittersweet. I truly love the gifts and the family time that we are rarely able to organize. Unfortunately,
the drama, the arguing, and the embarrassment that accompany the gathering of those I love are not nearly
as pleasant. In my mind, the words, “Happy Birthday to you…” are just comical pieces of ludicrous
chatter associated with the second day of June each year. “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”
during Christmas is a sarcastic statement written in Hallmark cards to delude the common population into
purchasing more merchandise. The gleeful jingles that accompany the various celebratory occasions tend
to resonate in my head, not as merry melodies, but as painful reminders of the past—the smell of liquor
on Christmas morning; the sight of infuriated parents dueling in the living room on Thanksgiving Day;
and worst of all, the sound of the screaming match on my back porch on my birthday, while my friends
listened attentively.
I remember that particular incident on the day I turned ten years old as if it happened last night. I
was in fourth grade, and as a pre-adolescent female, it was absolutely imperative that I have a party and a
sleepover to celebrate. My mother always allowed me to invite a gaggle of girls to sleepovers despite the
domestic disturbance in our home. I always invited the same six girls—Nicole, Ashley, Sierra, Carmen,
Brandy, and Sarah—some still my best friends. I only permitted my closest friends—the ones I knew
would never tell anyone what they saw when they stayed, the ones who would love me no matter what my
family did, the ones I could trust not to blow my cover at school as the girl with the perfect life—to meet
my father. Conveniently, we owned a 1989 Chevy Astro van that could encompass up to eight
passengers, so this was our shuttle of choice. My mom came and picked us up from school around a
quarter till three, attempting to avoid the flood of soccer moms and dads who poured into my elementary
school each day to sweep away their children. With the aid of my companions, I decided to go to our
local water park. Local for us meant a twenty-mile drive since the grandest stores in our community were
Piggly Wiggly and a BP station. At the park, my friends had a blast, lounging in the lazy river, weaving
through the wave pool, and shooting down the slides. My locale of choice was mainly centralized in the
lazy river due to the fact that I have always and always will sink like a stone in water.
Around seven o’clock we left the water park to grab some pizza before heading home. It’s
amazing how much pizza seven ten-year-old females can consume in ninety minutes. We stuffed our
faces to our heart’s content and departed. As we exited the doors of the parlor, I felt the sunset wash
across my face, the beautiful, glorious day fading into the oblivion of darkness as we headed back to my
house. I dreaded what we might stumble upon once we got there, but I refused to let my friends see the
terror that loomed in my mind. Instead of giving in to my inevitable fate, I prolonged our merriment for
as long as possible, singing joyously, dancing idiotically, and laughing hysterically all the way back to the
shadowed countryside I called home.
Turning into our driveway, I felt my stomach drop into my shoes. My house was illuminated
only by the faint dim twinkle from the headlights of the van. Darkness was never a good sign on any
occasion, especially since my father was at home fiendishly awaiting our return. My mother told us to
wait in the car as she got out to unlock the door and light the path up our steps and through our dangerous
maze of a back porch, a hazard to anyone unfamiliar with our meandering patio. As she climbed and
maneuvered her way through the masses of junk my friends sat, noisily, patiently, and excitedly for the
sleepover to begin. She unlocked the door, turned the knob and pushed, only to find that a chair had been
barricaded against the other side preventing entry. She struggled only a second longer before proceeding
to roar out my father’s name and an assortment of inappropriate pseudonyms when he didn’t answer. She
alternated repeatedly between calls for him to open the door and a chorus of obscenities. My friends
stared onto the porch in absolute astonishment since my mother happened to be a teacher at our local
middle school; teachers aren’t allowed to say those words, are they? From the other side of the door came
my father’s retort to my mother’s curses—a refrain that made the browns of my cheeks flush red from
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embarrassment. I couldn’t believe it; I couldn’t believe that they would have a full-on verbal batter in the
presence of my friends, my ten-year-old friends. Of course my friends laughed it off and made jokes to
try and blanket the horror of the situation. Periodically, we still sing the “Open-This-Damn-Door!” song
to the sounds of an unaccomplished beat boxer, but there was no denying the reality of the situation. It
was my birthday, and my father did not care in the slightest. All he cared about was the six-pack sitting
on the table, not the fact that I had just brought six other people into my living hell.
When my father finally opened the door, the intensity of the alcohol’s odor could have knocked
back a brick wall. My face reddened again, not out of embarrassment, but anger this time. I marched
upstairs fiercely, ushering my friends behind me, as my parents’ verbal battle ensued. At the top of the
stairs I separated from my friends, exiting into the other bedroom. I sat on the floor with an empty
notebook and a pencil, sketching my frustrations into graphite tear drops on the page.
What common bond unites writers, poets, painters, photographers, fashion designers, singers, and
five-year-old macaroni artists? It is the need for a release from the world—from society, from family,
from friends, and even from one’s own self every once in a while—the need for self-expression.
Personally, I am no noteworthy writer or poet by any means. As a matter of fact, I happen to be
aesthetically challenged as far as pictures go, and I would not recognize high fashion if it pulled a chair
from beneath the seat of my pants. I’m a mediocre singer, and the only stages on which I perform song
and dance are the floor of my bathroom shower and the rug in my dorm room. Even at age five, I opted to
have my macaroni with cheese rather than glue, and I retained this deep, pressing loathe for finger
painting since I hated getting messy.
Despite my myriad of apparently sub-par activities and useless talents, I do possess one
redeeming quality—one artistic ability—one emotional vent—one outlet from an overbearing
environment—one channel of self-expression. My portal to within and escape from the world is drawing,
specifically still lives. When I draw, the inspiration pours from my soul onto the page as do the lyrics of a
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songwriter. Like a mother, I feel completely at peace with my art, my child. I believe that art is not
created, only expressed. It has a mind of its own, and it loathes bondage within the restraints and
confinement of the human body. A true artist does not claim ownership to his or her art; the two coexists
in symbiotic relationship, one feeding off the other and trading necessities. The artist, the pencil, the
paper, we are only the vessels by which art manifests itself, while art is the stress and the raw emotions
that can be emitted in no other form.
Drawing has been a part of my life from the time I could hold a pencil. My mother claims that I
was emulating cartoon characters before I could form anything even remotely similar to the letter A. At
age two, when most children decide to assert their creativity on the walls of their hallways, my mother
opted to give me crayons and paper. As I thank her for allowing me to be born into the world physically,
I thank her for stimulating my birth artistically. Ironically, the holidays that I loathe so passionately often
bore a fruit less bitter than the family memories I harbor—a fruit so sweet as to nearly negate the tart
events that accompanied it. The storm clouds of birthdays poured out showers of colored pencils, an
entire spectrum of rainbow-assorted shades. Gnarled and perfectly hideous Christmas trees floated away
from my thoughts as their itchy pine needles gave way to the grandeur and beauty of brilliantly unscathed
charcoal, smooth as an ebony stone polished by a weathering stream.
I remember back on Christmas of 1997 when I walked into our living room—beyond the scent of
cheap alcohol, poisonous tar, and nauseating tobacco—to find a mountain of supplies and a three-foot tall
plastic art desk, all for me; I was ecstatic, my very own studio, my very own workspace, my very own art
supplies. It was as if a whole new world had been opened up, a private world that only I could
experience, for me to explore. Over the course of six months, I greedily devoured the plethora of media
before me, longing to expel the anger and torment that welled inside my imagination.
With each passing year, the creativity that lived within cried for increasing attention, and I was
eager to oblige. With each layering of color, a burden lifted from my mind. With each painful death, a
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new piece emerged. It still troubles me, the memory of a single skid mark jumping across the sidewalk,
stopping only to reveal a dent and a broken window in a cookie-cutter house. My brother Myron came
into this world a dare devil, and he exited as one via a motorcycle only six days after my high school
graduation—thirteen sunsets after my birthday. Not even a week prior, Myron was telling me how much
pride I had given him, how even though I was salutatorian, I was still number one in his heart. I looked to
the sky, pain-stricken and in shock, begging desperately for him to tell me why he tried to save that bike,
the very curse of which my mother and I had warned him. We told him so many times that it was not a
toy—that he should get the best out of each joyride because it may be his last.
As I stood beside that stop sign, staring across at the copper-streaked, indented yellow paneling, I
felt as though my heart were the shattered fragments of the window, reduced to jagged shards and a
tattered frame. Horrible images flooded my mind as I looked at the red slashes that littered the canary
edifice; was it blood or had my cruel imagination gotten the better of me? I still do not know; I only
know that in my mind, it was, in fact, the red sustenance that pumped through my 29-year-old brother’s
heart. I bit back my tears, so that my mother could cry on my shoulder. Since I can remember, I have
been “mommy’s little boy,” “little Ms. Androgynous Fix-It,” and the backbone of our household when
my mother was not able to support it herself. Today was no different; I did not allow myself a single tear.
Instead, I paced the halls of my brother’s home, a zombie, barely living, discounting the involuntary
bodily functions that I could not cease. I contained myself until the day of the funeral, sitting in the front
pew, when they closed the navy casket, lined in powder blue, and forced me to say goodbye.
Church seemed unfamiliar to me, as I sat, crammed into a desolate pew between my parents. My
mother wept strongly and silently, holding me tightly to her as if to never lose another child. My father
poured rivers, engulfed by uncontrollable sobs, partially subdued by the luxury of an injection that was
courtesy of the insane asylum to which he committed himself the morning before my brother died. No, it
is not coincidence; my family is psychic, connected by this single thread of intangibility. My mother
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watched my brother die in Charlotte, North Carolina from behind her retina, as it happened, from 175
miles due east in our living room.
I held steadfastly, only silent tears dripping from my cheeks, until the pallbearers locked the
casket. The shock value skyrocketed off of the Richter scale; my whole being was unearthed. I shook
uncontrollably, as the tributaries overflowed into an ocean in my lap until, once again, I subdued myself,
and the service began. The talking lasted forever, rants and raves of grandeur and happier places—in one
ear and out of the other until Veronica, my sister-in-law and new widow, spoke. Her words touched me,
and although I had not been to church in nearly a year, I felt the presence of God touch me through her
voice. I spoke back, unable to contain the verbalizations of languages unbeknownst to me—foreign
tongues, screaming, “Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. He’s with You now. He’s with You!”
Everything after that moment is a blur, walking out of the service with Marlon, my other brother
and Myron’s twin, telling him that it’s okay; walking back into the sanctuary uncaringly and pulling my
family to their feet, gathering them together for the first time since I can remember. I told them, “This is
what he died for, to bring us back together.” As the spirit came, it went, and I slumped back into the pew,
deaf to the rest of the anecdotes and comforting passages; I was at peace.
I did not write of these moments in my journals. I could not bring myself to attempt to manifest
what I felt that day on paper in any form, until one day, about a month after the funeral, I broke down.
Release was out of reach; nothing could prevent the emotion from pressing down upon me. I picked up
my mechanical pencil and stared at the photo of my brother and me on the day of my graduation.
Inspiration struck as I sketched his memory onto a sheet of printer paper with 0.7 millimeters of horrible
quality graphite; justice was not done. The next day, I unearthed a pack of brand-new Prisamacolor
pencils—the unopened bottle of fifty-year aged wine to an artist. I poured my soul onto the white
canvasette, in the form of a blended red rose for Myron, encased in faded blue script that read,
“Live Life to the Fullest.”
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